The influence of metformin on HCY and IMT in newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes

Objective To investigate the changes of HCY(homocysteine) and IMT(intimal medial thickness) in newly diagnosed patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus(T2DM)before and after metformin,treatment and to explore the relationship between HCY and IMT.Methods Thirty type 2 diabetic patients and twenty healthy subjects were recruited.The T2DM subjects were given 1 500 mg/d metformin for one year.Changes of plasma HCY and IMT were determined before and after metformin treatment.Multivariate linear regression analysis was also used to analyze the relationship between HCY and IMT.Results Compared with the controls,plasma HCY and IMT were significantly higher in T2DM(P0.01,P0.05).After one year of metformin treatment,HCY and IMT were significantly reduced in T2DM(P0.05).Conclusions HCY and IMT are important predictive factors for macro-vascular complications.Metformin could attenuate the progression of macro-vascular lesions in T2DM.